“Microsoft on Monday announced a version of Windows that runs over the Internet from inside Microsoft’s own data centers,” Ina Fried reports for CNET.

MacDailyNews Take: Oh, boy. That sounds like it’ll work just wonderfully! Shudder.

Freid continues, “Dubbed Windows Azure, it’s less a replacement for the operating system that runs on one’s own PC than it is an alternative for developers, intended to let them write programs that live inside Microsoft’s data centers as opposed to on the servers of a given business.”

MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft Azure. For all the data you really don’t mind losing.

Freid continues, “The company itself plans to offer businesses the option of running over the Internet the kinds of software that have traditionally run on a company’s own servers. Microsoft already sells its Exchange corporate e-mail software in this way, but that is just the beginning, said Microsoft vice president Dave Thompson.”

Only Microsoft would name their cloud computing product after a cloudless sky.

However, when you think about it, Microsoft’s calling it “Azure” does actually make perfect sense: Windows users would hope to connect to Microsoft’s cloud, but there would no cloud available, so all they’d see would be nothing but a blue screen. As usual.

The big difference between Mobile Me and Azure is that Apple isn’t asking you to put your mission critical data on their servers. Schedules and distributed email are one thing, as you can access those in different ways if you lose internet connectivity. How much money will your business lose if you can’t access information that you’ve chosen to place outside of your total control?

I wonder how torturous the “brainstorming” meetings must be for things like this at Microsoft. It must be so, so, so bad. The types of people in their meetings, and listening to the ideas being thrown around along with their reasoning behind them.

It’s committees like these that create Brown colored MP3 players, and name their “cloud” something that means no clouds.